As the 16th Maine Infantry slowly coalesced at August in summer ’62, the War Department asked Maine to raise three additional infantry regiments. Each would number around 1,000 men, plus 35-37 officers (if you counted the surgeon and assistant surgeon). Sitting at a desk in Brunswick on Monday, July 14, the 33-year-old professor of modern […]

“Daylight dawned, cold, wet, and cheerless” in the 20th Maine Infantry’s temporary camp west of Petersburg, Va. on Thursday, March 30, 1865, said Pvt. Theodore Gerrish of Co. H. The previous day, elements of the 1st Division, 5th Corps, Army of the Potomac, had captured the Confederate earthworks stretching across the Quaker Road near […]

The end was approaching. By late March 1865, “we felt sure that he (Ulysses Simpson Grant) was preparing some great movement, and this must be still to the left, to cut [Robert E.] Lee’s communications and envelop his existing lines,” said Brig. Gen. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 5th […]

Charles Preble spent three years fighting for the Union, and all he got for his efforts was a lousy wound and a fancy testimonial from Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. The enigmatic Charles Melvin Preble was 21 when he lifted his right hand to “solemnly swear, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United […]

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Brian Swartz

Welcome to "Maine at War," the blog about the roles played by Maine and her sons and daughters in the Civil War. I am a Civil War buff and a newspaper editor recently retired from the Bangor Daily News.
Maine sent hero upon hero — soldiers, nurses, sailors, chaplains, physicians — south to preserve their country in the 1860s. “Maine at War” introduces these heroes and heroines, who, for the most part, upheld the state's honor during that terrible conflict. We tour the battlefields where they fought, and we learn about the Civil War by focusing on Maine’s involvement with it.
Be prepared: As I discover to this very day, the facts taught in American classrooms don’t always jibe with Civil War reality.
I can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.